Zodiacal Light, Saguaro National Park, Arizona

[Roger Clark]

Continuing the night theme, here is an image I took last spring.

The Zodiacal Light, from Saguaro National Park, Arizona. Each spring in the northern hemisphere, the ecliptic rises almost perpendicular to the horizon in the west from mid-northern latitudes after the sun sets. Dust in our Solar System along the plane where the planets rotate around the sun (the ecliptic) scatters sunlight. After sunset we can see that scattered light, known as the Zodiacal light. In this image the Zodiacal light rises between the cacti in the west. At upper center is the Pleiades star cluster.


Canon 5D Mark II with 20mm, f/2.8 lens at f/2.8, 30 second exposure at ISO 400. The cacti were illuminated by an LED flashlight. Taken at 7:46 pm on March 14. The right side was cropped about 10%.


Roger

[Dan Brown]

Quite a combination of lightings here Roger! Great! Very interesting info! I've never heard of these conditions but then, there aren't any birds involved. Wait, is that an Elf Owl peeking out of one of those Saquaros?;)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Way cool Roger! I didn't know about the lights either! I may look into adding the bit back on the right....not much because it works to frame the light but it does feel a touch tight....even for me;). I think because of the unusual nature of this the lights work as a comp element in the scene framed by the 2 cacti.....stars adding another dimension. Very unearthly looking....in a cool way. Was the light on the horizon tough to deal with? Does this occur only just after sunset? Pretty cool too that you got that many stars and overall I think this works very nicely! Looking at this you may have convinced me to get that lens too!

[Roger Clark]

Roman,

After I posted this, I found it was a quick process (last spring) from the jpeg file. I'll have to redo if from the raw (I was recording raw + jpeg). And in my sometimes left-right dyslexic moments, I should have said the crop was off the left side, not right. So I don't have more on the right on this image (but have many other images). One thing I didn't like about the led flashlight is that it is too blue.

Regarding the Zodiacal light, it is seen at both after sunset and before sunrise. In the fall for northern hemisphere mid-latitude observers, the ecliptic rises steeply before sunrise. The morning Zodiacal light is often referred as the false dawn. So now would be a good time to try some before dawn photography.

The light on the horizon was some faint light from sunset and I didn't do anything to it. There are a few lights near the horizon in the image.

Roger

[Andrew McLachlan]

I like this one Roger. It is very cool.

[Robert Amoruso]

Otherworldly colors, separation on the Saguaro's and a cool looking inverted "V" to the far-off glow. Cool looking image Roger.